Apache Solr & OpenSearch
Deep expertise in Apache Solr and OpenSearch — relevance tuning, scaling, cluster operations and search architecture, from someone who helps build the technology itself. The specialism Cominvent is known for.
Cominvent AS · Drammen, Norway
Cominvent is the independent practice of Jan Høydahl — Apache Lucene & Solr committer and Apache Software Foundation member, based in Drammen, Norway. Expert help with open-source search (Apache Solr & OpenSearch), plus AI & chatbots, open-source data platforms and cyber security.
What we do
Deep expertise in Apache Solr and OpenSearch — relevance tuning, scaling, cluster operations and search architecture, from someone who helps build the technology itself. The specialism Cominvent is known for.
LLM-powered applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), semantic search and conversational assistants — grounded in your own data.
Modern data platforms and lakehouse architectures on open-source foundations — ingestion, storage, query and governance without vendor lock-in.
Security assessments, infrastructure hardening and secure-by-design engineering for the search, data and AI systems you depend on.
Live, instructor-led online courses in Apache Solr and search — hands-on, and open to attendees anywhere. Run through our dedicated training business.
Browse courses at solrtraining.com →Version migrations and upgrades, plus live production support for open-source search and data infrastructure when you need an expert on call.
Selected work
Replaced an aging legacy engine with Apache Solr — indexing cut from hours to minutes, better relevance and lower hardware cost.
Apache Solr search for Norway's largest electronic health-record platform — sub-second across millions of records, with facets, highlighting and ranking.
Site search across ~70 university web sites on Apache Solr and ManifoldCF, with custom crawling, security and facets.
Migrated news search from FAST to Apache Solr for eight online publications — cutting licence cost and easing cloud scaling.
Search behind the NAF travel planner (reiseplanlegger.naf.no).
Search and content matching for a privacy-first advertising platform that places ads by article content, without cross-site tracking.
Clients
Apache Solr is now a crucial part of our Electronic Health Record platform, powering search and analytics for a large part of Norway's hospitals. We could not have found anyone more experienced than Jan to assist us.
I have hired Jan on multiple occasions as a consultant related to our Solr search solutions. Jan is very knowledgeable, always to the point, providing insightful and pragmatic advice.
Jan is very knowledgeable about Solr and was a great help in scaling our platform. I would definitely recommend him for this kind of consultancy.
Jan helped us analyse and solve a set of long-standing performance problems in our Solr cluster — clear recommendations on configuration and best practices, and solving a tricky Java garbage-collection issue.
Jan migrated our FAST-based news search to the Solr platform. The new search performs better on less hardware and has proven stable and robust. I highly recommend Jan — especially for search-related projects.
I was consistently impressed by the high level of service Jan provided to customers throughout the world. He is the kind of consultant who won't stop until the job is done and done right.
About

Cominvent AS is the independent consulting practice of Jan Høydahl — based in Drammen, Norway, working with clients worldwide.
Jan has worked in IT since 1995, starting at Ericsson and then at search pioneer FAST Search & Transfer before going independent through Cominvent. For well over a decade he has been at the heart of open-source search: a member of the Apache Software Foundation, an Apache Lucene & Solr committer and PMC member, and a past Chair of the Apache Solr project — one of the people who build and steer the technology itself. His search work spans Apache Solr, Lucene, OpenSearch and Elasticsearch.
As a sole consultant, you work directly with Jan: no account managers, no hand-offs. Beyond search, Cominvent brings the same rigour to AI & chatbots, open-source data & lakehouse platforms and cyber security — designing, building and hardening the systems, and handing over the knowledge so your team can run them.
Apache Solr™ committer & PMC member · Apache Software Foundation member
Contact
Tell us about your project — search, AI, data or security — and we'll get back to you.